Living With Death
by peeninabox
Summary: Ghost's last moments fighting the inevitable following Shepard's heinous betrayal. Inspired by a scene from Black Hawk Down. One-shot.


**Got a part of this story from Smith's death scene in Black Hawk Down. I found it to be all the right kinds of beautiful and touching and wondered how it would go with Ghost's death in the MW2 campaign. I hope you guys enjoy this and please don't put me down so hard, this is the first ever fic I've uploaded anywhere. Thank you!**

"Clear the fucking table and put him down there," she commanded in a clear, crisp voice as the company barrelled into the makeshift shelter with a wounded, groaning Ghost in their midst.

If she was nervous, it didn't show. If she was scared, she kept it hidden. Soap wondered how she stayed so calm considering the fact that Simon Riley was her best friend and he'd just been shot in the shoulder and nearly set on fire. Soap did not know much of Simon personally and yet he was having trouble keeping the clawed monster from escaping the chasms of his throat.

The noise of crashing metal, breaking glass and fluttering papers littered the room as Archer shoved everything off the table. The explosion of sound reverberated against Soap's eardrums. She motioned the men to put Ghost down.

"Gently does it, there you go," her voice strained as she held Ghost's weight against her own. "I want you guys to put pressure on the wound. Every hand in the room. Now."

Soap lurched forward and combined his hands with Toad's bloody ones. Their eyes met over the din she made finding medical supplies and Simon's hoarse, pained screams. Toad's eyes were wide with shock or fear - Soap couldn't decide which exactly was it, his mouth slightly agape but other than those tell-tale signs, he betrayed no emotion.

She pushed into the little group crowding around Ghost on the table. "Okay, hands off the bullet hole on the shoulder, I wanna see it," she said. Soap and Toad tentatively raised their hands from the wound and immediately, crimson blood billowed out of the hole, flooding the table beneath Ghost and dripping onto the stone cold floor.

"What are we going to do, Doc? There's so much fucking blood," Toad asked, looking on in now barely concealed worry and ignoring the stains his bloody hands made on his gear.

She did not answer, just dug into the hole with a pair of blunt surgical scissors. Ghost's screaming did not cease, his voice becoming more and more broken by the second.

"Saskia," he gasped, sputtering on saliva. His right hand scrabbled at her elbow. "Saskia," he repeated.

She looked at him, her eyebrows knitted together, emphasizing the frown lines on her forehead, her green eyes caked with a combination of a hundred emotions. "I'm going to fix you, Simon, I promise," her voice softened, losing the hard, grim quality she kept up mere moments ago. With what seemed like the strength it took to lift a ton of rocks, she turned away from his glazed over eyes.

"It's the brachial artery, it's broken. Putting pressure is no help, I've got to find the broken end and clamp it to stop the bleeding," she disclosed to Chemo.

Chemo only nodded, too nervous to speak.

"Simon, I'm going to have to do something very painful to you in order to fix you." Her voice was soft and gentle.

She held the clamps with her mouth and signalled to Chemo. "On three."

On the count of three, she dug into the wound with her rubber gloved hand, igniting a new series of agonized screams from Ghost. His legs thrashed about, blood splashing to her face and clothes.

"Hold him still, hold him still!" she yelled through the clamps and gritted teeth. The group was silent, ashen, and those not holding him down stepped away from the table to look at anything else but the gruesome scene before them. Soap concentrated on holding Ghost's left hand, hating himself for being unable to offer anything else but moral support.

"Did you find it? Doc!"

"Yeah, yeah I got it! Here, clamp it, Chemo, quick!"

The only sounds in the room now were her ragged breathing and the unsettling noise of blood rushing against soft, destroyed tissue. Ghost's hand had gone limp in Soap's, his eyes faltering and his head dropping to the side. Soap felt his heart fall into his mud-caked boots. _Don't die, don't die, don't fucking die on us you son of a bitch_, he screamed internally with every fiber of his being, rubbing Ghost's hand and frantically looking for a pulse as if willpower alone could bring the man back to a semblance of life. He looked around the room with an almost pleading expression and saw nothing but the same expressions on his men's faces. Only Chemo and Saskia were oblivious to Ghost's suddenly prone body.

"What do I do now, Doc?"

"Just keep it clamped, Chemo!"

Chemo looked up at her in alarm. "Doc! It's going back in, what are we going to do? It's tearing!"

"Fuck! No, hold it, fucking hold it!" she lunged forward to save the broken artery but it was too late, the vessel slipped from the clamps back into the lake of blood in Ghost's shoulder where it was near impossible to find again.

"Damn it." Her breathing was heavy. Most of her auburn hair had escaped from her messy bun and were now hanging in clumps down the sides of her blood streaked face. Her forehead and neck were wet with cold sweat.

"Doc," Soap whispered.

She suddenly seemed acutely aware of the oppressive silence that enveloped them and glanced over at Ghost's pale, lifeless face. "Shit," she breathed.

Nearly tripping over the metal canister at her feet, she moved forward to pump Ghost's chest and breathe into him the oxygen he needed no more. She released little anguished gasps as she did so, not noticing that Ghost remained unresponsive to her efforts, not seeing that her own chest moved but his did not. She did not stop, just kept pumping and breathing, inhaling the scent of death and tasting his mouth on her lips. It seemed as though she thought he'd just passed out from the pain and would wake up to give her another chance at saving him.

"Doc, he's gone," Soap mustered as much courage into his voice as he could, pulling at her to make her stop torturing herself.

She pushed his arm away.

"Doc!"

He grabbed her waist forcefully. She tried to fight him but her physical strength was no match for his. Shoving him off her, she steadied herself at the table where her best friend lay dead. Tears streaked from her eyes, forming rivulets down her dirty face.

Toad put his hand on her shoulder to share in her agony, to give some sort, any sort of comfort. Moving away, she slammed her fist down on the table and stormed off out of the room, leaving a company of distressed and dismal men in her wake. The man lying in a pool of his own blood on the table with a hideous hole in his shoulder was now an empty vessel which could neither talk nor breathe no more.


End file.
